Snow Crash

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personaje 5/5. bine construite, originale, ajungi să te atașezi de ele, chiar și de antagonist.
fundal 5/5 cyberpunk perfect, la fel de bun ca și Gibson.
stil 5/5 curat, adrenalinizat, fluent, tehnic fără să fie tehnicist, bine tradus.
poveste 4/5 excelentă ca acțiune, răsturnări de situații și toate cele, dar nițel cam lungită cu partea religioasă.
total: una dintre cele mai mișto cărți citite de mine; cea mai pasionantă (pt mine) de la Zei Americani încoace (deci de vreo 10 ani). Total recomandată cititorilor de cyberpunk, unde aș pune-o pe podium; evident, nerecomandată celorlalți, ca orice cyberpunk.

I finished this audiobook a couple of weeks ago after hearing several tech podcasters recommending it. It's a cyberpunk novel, whatever that might mean, set in the near future. The main character, Hiro Protagonist, starts out as a pizza delivery guy working for Uncle Enzo, head of the Mafia. The USA is broken up into corporate franchises and the mafia is now one such franchise.

Hiro is a hacker and was involved in programming The Black Sun, the geek hangout in the metaverse. The metaverse is an idea of the future of the internet, more sort of AI where users goggle in and wander round using avatars to represent themselves.

The book gets into religion and linguistics and, as a former linguist and a current geek, I found Stephenson's ideas intriguing. Some of the best parts of the novel are when Hiro is discussing science and linguistics with the librarian (a piece of software that has access to the digital info archives).

All in all I found it to be an enjoyable, well-written and well-researcehd novel and I liked it well enough to consider reading more of Stephenson's novels.

I missed out on Snow Crash when it first came out. It was one of those books I kept hearing referenced, but just hadn't gotten around to listening to. And so, with my trial of Audible, I figured I would take advantage of the credit offered to me and snagged it. First off, let's get to the point of the Audible version. The performer did an excellent job of giving the different characters their own voice. It didn't always work perfectly, but I was still very impressed at how well he managed to create a character for each person in the book.

Regarding the story, while I doubt the future depicted will ever come to be in the exact details of the book, the trends described aren't actually that far off. The mixing of ancient religion and future technology was fascinating. Honestly, this is a book that could very easily feel extremely dated, but manages to actually feel quite relevant.

Snow Crash is a decent novel and my first from Neal Stephenson. The book wasn't bad but I just couldn't get into the story and I found Stephenson writing style a lot less engaging than I thought. Sometimes the dialogue seemed like it was written by a teenager - making me cringe from time to time. Additionally, I couldn't follow when the story was in the metaverse and when it was not, which added to the frustration of reading this book.

YMMV.

Tried to finish this. Had a lot of interesting stuff going for it. The main character, named Hiro Protagonist (its so ridiculous to name his this that it actually works somehow), was rather interesting. He rides around on a motorcycle and wields a samurai sword better than anyone else in the world. OK, cool. I like this guy. He hacks computer. Cool. He teams up with a sassy teenage ‘delivery' girl named Y.T. who gets around town by using some type of magnetic grappling hook to latch onto cars as they drive down these futuristic highways. Alright, cool. Bad guy named Raven who is more badass than Hiro shows up. Alright, things are getting interesting.

Nam-shubs. What the fuck? Everything from here on out is completely gobbledygook. Language is a code just like computer code. Spells are virus made by words that take infect people and get spread by prostitutes. This caused the Tower of Babel. There is a televangelist who has a massive floating city made out of all sorts of random boats and is the richest man on the planet or something. He wants to spread some super spell/virus/code.

I gave up.

An old favourite. This time around, I found myself getting impatient towards the latter half. The first act setup is probably my favourite part, how it creates the setting and introduces the concepts of the Metaverse. As a software guy, I love that “hacking” is like a superpower in the book. Once we get into the long discussions with the Librarian, I started skimming.

This was…interesting, to a point. Probably my favorite parts were the interesting twist on linguistics and Sumerian history/mythology. I’m a sucker for anything pertaining to ancient Mesopotamia. Probably the only reason I finished. The characters aren’t likable, they’re a Mary Sue and Gary Stu. 🙄 I really thought Stephenson was going to do more. The ending was so lackluster and felt very slapped together. Really hoped for more oomph…

Rating: Five Stars (out of 5)

Snow Crash is a book I've had on my to-read shelf for a long time. I think I bought this book in the 90's when there was a ton of buzz about it and when I was reading Science Fiction and Fantasy regularly. Why it took me so long to actually get around to reading, I'm not sure. It probably had something to do with a combination of high expectations and the size of the book. Finally, though, I bit the bullet and actually got to it through my Audible.com account. I love audiobooks.

Brief Synopsis:
A fast-paced adventurous romp in the near future. The cast of characters include a 15-year old skateboarding delivery girl, a nuclear harpoonist, a mafia kingpin, an advanced librarian AI, a religious hacker, and the main character Hiro Protagonist. The story revolves around Hiro, who turns out to be the second-baddest dude on the planet, though he starts out as a sword-wielding pizza delivery guy and part-time hacker. Along the way he partners up with YT (the delivery chick) and encounters all the other main characters while he discovers and tries to foil an intricate plot that endangers everything they hold dear.

Deeper Discussion
World Building
One of the great things about this book is the world that Stephenson “creates” in his near-future dystopia. Though the book was written in 1992, it still reads well in 2012 (20 years later). It has a great not-too-distant future feel. The concepts used involve the breakup of law and the corporatization of essentially everything. Sometimes it has a Mad-Max feel and at other times it feels like Gibson's seminal cyberpunk works (Neuromancer et al.) In this book, there are not one, but two worlds created. And done well. The Metaverse is Stephenson's online habitat, where users “jack in” to a computer-generated otherworld in which is greater in scope than the real world, but which still has programmed “rules” that make it interesting. Both the near-future and the metaverse are remarkably plausible and make for great plot devices. Needless to say, the author puts them to great use.

Metaphysics and Religion
While the beginning and end of the book are mostly fast-paced adventure, the middle of the book gets a lot deeper with a venture into metaphysical concepts of language, religion, and viruses (computer and biological). I found it to be extremely interesting as a plot concept. Clearly there was a lot of research done by Stephenson, which allows him to put it all together nicely while not derailing the whole book. Briefly, he explores the idea of vectors (see the medical terminology) including biological viruses, thought concepts as vectors, language as vectors, and religion as vector and infected state. He takes this all the way to the hacker world by analogizing the way software viruses work (essentially these are language programs, after all). Bringing in some ancient-world religion and quite possibly real research into religion and tying it all together on three separate levels (biological, religious, and metaverse) gets pretty “deep.” I can see this being offensive to some people. It was borderline offensive to me.

But just as you start to get worried about the discussion crossing the line, the author gets back to the adventure and finishes things up with a mad dash to the finish line.

Thoughts
This was a super-fun book to read. It seems rare to find a book that will successfully build worlds these days. Maybe that's just because I'm not reading a lot of science fiction anymore. But this book is exceptionally good in that regard, in my opinion. It's equally rare to see a book where the author will even attempt to touch on deeper subjects such as religion and metaphysics in what is a fun adventure. Honestly, this book reminded me of Dan Brown's The DaVinci Code in that respect. Maybe not quite as well researched, but with a similar “feel.” I would highly recommend Snow Crash to anyone who enjoyed The DaVinci Code.

For some reason, I got the feeling that the wrap-up was a bit abrupt. Somehow it felt like the author would have liked about 30% more space to write in the book. Maybe to go a little deeper in the middle section. Maybe to flesh out the ending a little differently. I could be wrong. Despite this, it was still very satisfying and makes me eager to read Cryptonomicon.

Who should read this book?
• Anyone who enjoys science fiction or dystopian fiction. This is a key book in the genre of cyber punk. For that reason alone it is required for SF readers.
• Anyone who enjoyed The DaVinci Code or that general type of fiction (adventure with some research) or even those who enjoyed the Indiana Jones flicks.

Good post cyber punk book. As with many cyber punk books there is an underlying them of spirituality. But this is clearly not a Christian view of spirituality. The book is good and the ideas are thought provoking, but if you are easily offended by books that attack the core tenants of Christianity then you want to avoid this book.

I found this a real slog. Easier to put down, than pick up. I've read quite a few books in-between starting and finishing this.

70+ sections/chapters - lots of ideas, references, certainly plenty of thoughts sparked. Technology, societal futurology, politics, pharma, etc. language as an idea virus (biblical/historical precedents)

However, it felt like a relatively thin plot.
It has the obligatory; a hero, a heroine - an anti-hero, who is possibly a hero - depending upon which side you stand on. An obligatory sex scene, etc.